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This publication can help you discover Midsummer customs and witness their strength this present day. examine the traditional tools of divination; attempt conventional recipes for foodstuff, mead, and wine; and empower your magical instruments with the power of the solstice solar. jam-packed with functional rules on how you can rejoice Midsummer, this advisor additionally compares related fairs world wide, together with Celtic, Norse, Saxon, Egyptian, Russian, and local American.

A part of the courses to the Underworld sequence from Hadean Press. Goetic divination has had a foul press from the city literati of the Classical international as much as the current day. In Goetic Divination, Jake Stratton-Kent presents an summary of the background of divination, in addition to functional guide on divinatory tools, together with using astragals, pendulums and hydromancy.

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At least one of these sticks is always oak, though the other may be of a wood representing the feminine to the oak's masculine. The bonfires also contained oak wood. It can be argued that the Midsummer fires are the funeral pyres of the summer sun. The Celts thought that there were two sun deities, the summer sun and the winter sun. In The Golden Bough, James Frazer speculates that the sacred Oak King was sacrificed on Midsummer Day by being burned alive, after which he was taken 32 Ancient Themes for Modern P;}g;}ns to Caer Arianrhod, the whirling, spiral castle located in the Corona Borealis.

Aeschylus declared: The holy Heaven doth live to wed the ground, And Earth conceives a love of marriage, The rain that falls from husband Heaven Impregnates Earth; and she for mortal men gives birth To pastoral herbage and Ceres' corn. cer gods are invariably associated with the oak tree because the oak attracts ::::2[':: lighming than any other tree. -y. Lhrough the earth realm (the tree) into the underworld via its roots. These oaks were venerated as the dwelling place of the god. Into the twentieth century, any oak that was struck be lightning was considered par­ ticularly powerful, and people would often travel for miles to take a small piece of such a tree to be used as a talisman.

The magic of fire is said to break all evil spells. :nd babies before they were named to protect them from the attentions of fairy i\:wnappers. Fire plays an important part in Craft rituals. When space and regulations permit, a bonfire is lit outdoors. This fire is used to dispose of any outworn or broken Craft tools and books. When the flames have died down a little, it is leapt over for pro­ tection and luck. When space does not permit, three yellow or gold candles are lit in the cauldron. Again, the cauldron is jumped over for fertility and good fortune.